The more I read the Gospels, the more they seem to confront the very patterns of the world we live in. At one point Mary, pregnant with Jesus cries out: “God casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly… God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty…” You can’t help but think if she were alive in contemporary America some folks would try to accuse the Virgin Mother of being Marxist or promoting class warfare. But all through Scripture we see this – over 2000 verses about how God cares for the poor and most vulnerable.
What would Jesus say about Wall Street?
Continue reading “A devotion for Wall Street”
Category: Theology
Even the Vatican
Rejects deregulation and trickle-down economics. Wonder that Newt and Little Ricky will have to say about this!
‘These are the ideals of the Bible’
Richard Crocker, the chaplain at Dartmouth College, gives a sermon on Occupy Wall Street. Go read the rest:
… Now I expect that some of you are agreeing with the Amos and Jesus and me. But others of you are not convinced. You wonder what I (or perhaps Amos and Jesus) know about economics. And the answer is: very little. But we do know what is right. We do know that the exploitation of the poor by the rich and powerful is wrong. And we do know that any nation that countenances such policies is really planting the seeds of its own destruction.
But wait – you may say: this is a democracy. We can change the policies of our nation by voting. Ah, yes. But it is not easy. Jeffrey Sachs, who is a well-known professor at Columbia and who does know something about economics, points out that “the rich finance candidates while the poor cannot. Political scientists have shown that members of Congress – many of whom are wealthy themselves – devote their legislative votes to the wishes of their well-to-do constituents. President Obama has dined regularly with the lords of finance; meanwhile, billionaire oil magnates fund the tax-cutting frenzy of the Tea party.” And Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize winning economist, said in Friday’s New York Times: “The protestors indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.”
Why am I saying this to you?? What can you do about it? I am saying it to you because we are all here very privileged. We are part of the wealth of this country, even if we are not all among the top 1 per cent – though some of us at Dartmouth certainly are. You are forming your ambitions and commitments, determining how you are going to spend your lives. And the pressures at Dartmouth, the contours of passage, the incentives and structures, encourage you to give your talents to corporate America – to occupy Wall Street. I want you to question that ambition – not only for yourselves, but for your friends. Where should the most talented youth in our nation devote their energies? You must answer that question.
Continue reading “‘These are the ideals of the Bible’”
Debate
Between atheists and deists. Steve Volk has a real knack for writing about the space between belief and non-belief, go read it.
Some ‘Rain’ to stay sane in Philly
Some people don’t like the rain, as the Beatles noted in 1966. Not me. I’ll take the rain over the heat, and I feel fortunate to be far from Texas, where a record drought continues despite Rick Perry’s rain dance back in April.
The Philly heat seemed to break most emphatically last Sunday, when a morning drizzle turned into a downpour that rarely let up until evening. I took a break from writing to go for a run in the late afternoon after I dug through the rubble in my basement and found a big ugly bill cap to keep the rain off my glasses.
How many looks-per-day for the Divine One?
Do you spend a lot of time logged in and looking for the truth? Could be you’re searching in the wrong places, or at least on the wrong sites. Try God’s Blog, and don’t forget to tell him what you think of his work.
Who wrote the book of love
I’m not getting into the weeds of this, but will only repeat what I always say. As a reporter, I would read the coverage of other reporters who attended the same meetings I did — and the stories were always completely different. Why would I believe that we’d get an accurate depiction of the life of Jesus from all those different people? It’s just not human nature to report anything without your own filter.
Soul men
See, posts like this are why I donate money to Lance Mannion.
Egyptians, not Muslims or Christians
What a shame we can’t have this kind of unity here:
Michael Mounir said after the prayers that the Egyptian regime has persecuted everyone, Muslim and Copt alike, which was proved by the fact that during the past 12 days, while the police and security forces had removed themselves from the scene, there had been no attacks on churches. Rather, Muslim youth had undertaken to guard them. In the past, he said, despite the presence of security forces, churches and Copts had suffered massacres, the most recent having been on New Year’s day.
Continue reading “Egyptians, not Muslims or Christians”
Feast of the presentation
Today is a holy day in the Roman Catholic church, and if I recall correctly, a day off from school!
And tomorrow is the feast of St. Blaise, a minor saint. On this day, we had to go to church to get our throats blessed. (No, really. I wonder if they still do that?) The priest had this contraption made out of candles that looked like half of a small steering wheel and he’d aim it at your throat. Once in place, he’d pronounce the blessing.
The whole thing made me tense and always struck me as vaguely threatening. I never trusted authority figures, and I haven’t changed much.